Target 2011 - 10GHz and More

Engineers currently working at IBM, AMD, Intel, and Motorola have set the date for the race to 10GHz processors. By 2011, engineers hope to have the technology and knowledge to build and implement processors with speeds in excess of 10,000 MHz, more than ten times the current speeds.

Intel has already reported the construction of a 0.05 micron processor in their experimental labs, and will next year switch to copper rather than aluminum due to the properties of copper which allow it to be made smaller than aluminum.

Another way engineers hope to achieve these speeds is through embedded DRAM. Later this week at a conference, IBM will demonstrate such a chip, which it claims can match speeds of 1 GHz processors.

Using different materials, and more advanced architectures, designers hope to bring these processors into the home and give people the power to create and experience the Internet and daily life in an entirely new way. With these processing speeds, experts say speech recognition programming becomes more possible, along with a myriad of other advanced software currently unsupported by today's PCs.

This technology will eventually lead to hand-held, completely portable, wireless devices that allow users to connect to the Internet from anywhere, at any time. With the implementation of more human-like interfaces and advanced speech recognition, consumers can look for the PC of the future to become part of every aspect of daily life.